We all know that aoe3 is not the favourite game of aoe2 players and it havent got the same amount of players. By this reason I have thought about a game mode to attract them to the game.
No deck. This is the main problem for this players cause you can get instantly crates or units from TC.
Cause 1st point we need to do some changes of course. For this I have thought to hide XP.
Europeans get 2 factories on age IV with the 2 first shipments in this age.
-Germans get free (as a counter of) uhlans that can be trained from stables (at normal speed) with each shipment.
-Indians do the same but with villagers. On imperial age they get wood trickle from cows.
-Spaniards get some crates since age II with shipments.
-Aztecs get coins with WC aura.
-British manors give 1 settler each after built, trained at normal speed.
-Portuguese train settlers slower.
-Dutch get +1 limit of banks aging up.
-TP just give resources.
-Early trickles buildings would be nerfed to compensate no vills shipments. Reverse it on later ages.
Some cards effects are moved to technologies on a university-like building (not space on church maybe idk). This would be must cards for each civs. (Tulip speculation, wood trickles for india, daymios, some cards that boost units, arsenal, forts, idk… any suggestion?).
Walls would be stronger, more expensive and slow to build (a lot of 3 things) to remind them to aoe2 ones. Same for forts (not agra).
This way the games would be slower and longer, there are tons of people that dont want to finish them at 5min, this is the reason for treaty to exist. Here rushes would be an option but later than now, but growing it is too cause no crates or vills.
After playing this mode some players become to supremacy. If not, the core thing is that players enjoy the game in one way or another, kepping the game alive
I think you can simplify this by putting all interesting cards into a building called the university. And then you limit it to only 20 techs researchable from there.
Europeans can build two factories but no more.
For each tech researched at university, some of German uhlans become free depending on age etc.
This is the idea but balance changes are needed for some civs that are XP focused as Spain, Germans, Indians… Also portuguese and British I thought that their bonus need to be touched to not be OP cause other civs dont get villagers from HC and the handicap would be too much.
AoEII players barely acknowledge AoEIII exists and I don’t think changing the game to appeal to those people is gonna do anything but upset AoEIII players who want more content. Let the games be different. I’ve made peace with the fact AoEIII is never gonna get the love from the community it deserves.
The AoEIII family is small in number but passionate and the devs have given us enough reason to believe they care about the game too. AoEIII deserves to be played by more people but if those people don’t appreciate the games merits then it’s their choice. And loss.
AoEIII demands more out of it’s players than other AoE games and I see that as a badge of pride, honestly.
Reskin the units to medieval
Then the game would be embraced by AOE2 players.
Sarcasm ends here. One thing I do consider important is the entry-level instruction to new players i.e. “the must cards for the civ”.
The pre-defined decks is not informative enough. Many people I know who entered aoe3 found themselves overwhelmed by choices, and they need to search for tutorials (which is already a quite high bar. A lot of people simply give up before this stage).
For example, every civ needs some kind of “mastery” missions like aoe4 ones, especially those who have very unique economic systems and rely heavily on a few specific cards (e.g. Dutch). Right now this is somewhat lacking and the tutorials and campaigns do not help much. And many civs do not even have a campaign.
Specific to aoe3, there also need to be some sort of “key card combo” instructions when learning about the civs.
It was just an idea, dont be aggresive hahaha. If it can attract more players why not?? About “cards” it would be to remove units and crates shipments, thats all, moving unique upgrades to an university to keep the differences between civs, if you dont like the university name it would be Company of new world or something like that.
The essence of the game keeps being the same with natives, resources, units, counters system, buildings…
Obviously its just an optional mode of course, that in my opinion dont need too much work to add it. It would be just the inverse of empire wars, a mode already added.